SHIFT has allocated the needed funds for both Black Liberation Month 2025 and 2026. The activities throughout this month aim to uphold sustainability through a social justice lens by creating and implementing programming that centers our most marginalized population on campus, those being Black-identified students. Through a month of events and engagement opportunities, we hope to spotlight and uplift our Black-identified student population by keeping the Black experience as the foundation of the ideas we put forward in this project.

This project focuses on offering young children in the Child Development Laboratory opportunities for engagement with the natural world and the ability to develop an ethic of care for our planet. Children will be able to spend time outdoors and in the Arcata Community Forest no matter the weather, geared up for the elements and ready to observe, interact, and develop an ethos of care for the place they call home.

The Native American Studies Department’s Rou Dalagurr Food Sovereignty Lab and Traditional Ecological Knowledges Institute, Cultural Fire Club, and the NAS Department are leading Returning Good Fire — an Indigenous-led rematriation project restoring cultural burns on California’s North Coast. Guided by cultural fire practitioners and Indigenous students, the project supports habitat restoration, revives culturally significant plants, conserves water, and trains future Indigenous firekeepers.